


Fletching

by inlovewithnight



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:36:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Fletching

Lately Kate's been dreaming about flying.

In the dreams, she has something besides a good bow and the muscles and reflexes she's drilled into herself with sheer stubborn repetition. She's gifted. Sometimes she has wings, a ten-foot span with golden feathers that carries her through the sky like an avenging angel. Sometimes it's like Tommy when he runs, so fast it's indistinguishable from flight. And sometimes it's like Ororo Munroe; Kate only ever saw Storm once, but it was amazing and terrifying and beautiful, how she called the winds in from every corner to do her bidding.

It's different in every dream but there's always the feeling of power, woven into her body, right at her fingertips and obeying her will. She's a force of nature. She's consequence and right made flesh. She's _dangerous._

She always wakes up fighting mad.

"Rise and shine, Hawkweye," Billy says, his voice thick and sleepy over the phone. "And remind me again why you don't just buy an alarm clock."

"You don't have a snooze button." Her heart is still pounding, from the race against thunder and rain in her dream and from the jolt of terrified adrenaline that knocked her out of it. The song she has set on her phone for Billy's calls is some underground indie punk group she's never heard of, but Billy loves; it's loud enough to wake her up and it makes her think of Billy and that's all she needs it to do.

The scream of guitars and obscenities is a hell of a way to wake up in the morning, though. She draws a slow breath through her nose and holds it as Billy laughs. "I bet I could get one."

"Just have to want it hard enough, right?" She sits up slowly, wincing at aches in her muscles that set in overnight and are going to take forever to stretch out. She has to stop taking a pounding the night before gym class. She has to stop getting knocked through walls.

"Right now I just want some coffee."

"You keep Starbucks in business, Kaplan. Corporate enabler."

"Says the girl in the penthouse on her 600-threadcount sheets."

"Go to hell, Billy."

"Cranky, cranky, Katie. Are we meeting this afternoon?"

She rolls her head slowly, wincing as her neck pops. "I think you guys are. Ask Eli. I have a thing."

"What kind of thing?"

"A none of your business thing." She wraps her left arm around herself and leans into it, trying to will the ache in her shoulder to give. She'd be a hundred times nicer if she wasn't so sore.

"Okay." She can hear things rustling on the other end of the call, Billy up and moving around. "I won't pry into the princess's personal affairs, never fear."

"Don't, Billy. I'm not in the mood."

"No shit, really?" He sighs and she thinks maybe she should apologize; she probably would if she wasn't twisting herself into a pretzel trying to stretch a knot in her hip. "Get up and make yourself pretty, Kate."

"Same to you."

"It's all natural."

She has to laugh a bit, and some of the pissed-off fog over her brain eases. Just a little, but it's a start. "Bye, Billy."

"Bye, Kate."

She hangs up and gets out of bed, shuffling to her dresser for shorts and a sports bra. Her school starts an hour later than Billy's. She can take some quality time with the heavy bag right now, and maybe feel something like human by the time she gets to class.  
**  
First period is English. She thinks she would like some of these books more if they didn't have to analyze them to death.

They've finished Shakespeare (_Titus Andronicus_; she wrote her essay on why it was bullshit that Lavinia didn't get her own revenge. Teddy and Eli made her edit out three pages on how it was completely possible to castrate two guys without the use of your hands), Austen (if one more of her classmates completely missed the social criticism and the satire, she was going to start seeing if she could carve arrows out of pencils), and Poe (beautiful language, shame about the insanity).

Today Mr. Everett is passing around copies of _The Sound and the Fury_. "The twisted and subtle bonds of family, the inescapable weight of history," he says. "And a hell of a way with words."

Kate stares at Faulkner's face on the cover and realizes she doesn't even have the energy to start hating it. She wishes she could remember exactly when her entire view of the world narrowed to a lens of discontent that distorts everything and shrinks it down like Cassie going all Ant-woman.

"Miss Bishop. Would you like to begin?"

"No thank you," she says, not looking up.

"It was more of a rhetorical question, I'm afraid."

She exhales slowly as giggles dart around the room. Annie Ortelli's voice is the loudest, as always, and Kate's fingers twitch against the cover of the book. The two of them are in the same gym class; today they're going to be playing volleyball, and it's going to take everything Kate's got to keep from serving the ball directly at Annie's smug face. The thing is, she knows she could hit it hard enough to undo all of Annie's plastic surgeon's work on her nose. She could do some damage. She could leave blood all over the gym floor.

"Miss Bishop?"

She looks up and realizes that everyone in the room is staring at her, most with curiosity, Mr. Everett with concern. "I need to go," she says, and he frowns.

"I'm not giving you a pass just because you don't want to read aloud, Miss Bishop."

"That's not why I need to go."

"Katherine..."

"Please," she says, hating how her voice catches a little, threatening to break. Christ. It's worse being weak in front of these people than it is in front of her team. At least the guys have the manners to pretend they don't notice the bad days, just like she does for them.

Mr. Everett sighs and nods. "Go see the nurse."

She stands up and smooths her skirt, not letting herself react to Annie's stage-whispered comment to one of her friends. It's the same old bullshit anyway, what-do-you-suppose-is-wrong-with-_her_, giggled speculation, _have you seen who she goes off with after school?_ Kate's tired of it. So tired.

It turns out that when tired builds up enough, it fuses together like carbon. Only instead of turning into diamond, it turns into angry. Really damn angry.

She shoves the book into her backpack and takes the stairs down to the main floor two at a time. She picks up her stride down the hallway, shifting her weight up onto her toes and hitting a full sprint just as she passes the nurse's office. She's flying out the door before anyone can say a thing.  
**  
Clint never says a word when she shows up at the mansion and just spends a few hours shooting. Well, he says a lot of words, but they're all about technique and targets and how she's handling the bow and to be nicer to the damn thing, since she took it away from him and all.

"I didn't take it away." She sights down the arrow and shoots, and yet again it ends up a half-inch to the left of where she wanted it. "Fuck."

"Your wrist is too tense. And you snuck in here in the middle of the night with what's his name and stole it, how is that not taking it away?"

"I earned it. You said so. It's mine."

"Say it like you mean it, Bishop." He swings his arms in slow arcs, rolls his shoulders, and does a backflip for no reason whatsoever. Being a showoff must come standard with the superhero package. But only if you were a guy, were accepted by Cap, and came back from the dead.

Which was actually a longer list than it seemed like, once she thought about it.

"Bishop? No smart comeback?"

"It's mine," she repeats, fumbling for another arrow. "I don't have to jump through any more hoops to prove it."

"No, I guess we're pretty much done with that part." He stretches his arms up over his head and then does another flip. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Ha. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, honey. I've known enough women to know that's a lie."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"At least that's honest." He watches as she lines up her next shot. "Breathe all the way up from your toes."

"I know what I'm doing."

"Humor an old man."

She draws in a slow breath, flexes her fingers, narrows her eyes, and lets go. The arrow hits a quarter inch to the right of where she wanted it.

"Better," Clint says. "If you were aiming for a person, that would still hit him. Or her. I'm trying for gender-neutral, these days. What they call politically correct."

She tosses the bow down and turns away, looking around the training room for her bag. She probably left it just inside the door, as usual, but for some reason her eyes don't seem to want to find it, just track the expanse of the floor and the walls all the way up to the skylight, trying to blind her with the late afternoon streaming through the glass.

"Hey," Clint says sharply. "Show my bow a little respect, there."

"It's mine," she says reflexively, still looking up at the light.

"Then pick it up and take care of it right. What's going on with you, Bishop?"

She shakes her head, then again, blinking rapidly as she comes back to herself. "Yeah, of course. Sorry." The apology is more to the bow than to him as she picks it up, running her fingers gently down the arch of wood and then the string. It's all still tight and strong and perfect. Still hers, for now. "Sorry."

"What's going on, Kate?" He moves closer and she steps back. Her hands settle properly on the bow, holding it ready but at rest, defensive even without an arrow nocked.

"I probably won't be by for a few days," she says, tossing her head in an effort to get her sunglasses back up on her nose without having to let go of the bow. "Just so you don't worry."

"I never worry," he says dryly, watching her more closely than she likes. She takes another step back and he reaches for one of the katanas leaning against the wall, turning his body just enough away from hers that she can breathe again. "What's going to be keeping you busy?"

She wants to laugh, but the tightness of her throat means it would sound like a sob, and she doesn't do that anymore. "I was supposed to meet my father an hour ago. And I'm here. So I imagine he's going to be annoyed."

"Why did you do that?" There's no condemnation in his voice, only mild curiosity. She doesn't answer for a minute, just watches him go through the first movements of his warm-up. "Kate?"

"I needed to shoot," she says. "I needed to...be here."

Any other Avenger she can think of--and okay, she doesn't know that many of them, but still--would say something deep and meaningful and wise, but Clint just nods. Thank God.

She nods at the door. "I'd better go."

"Take care of the bow." He tosses the katana in the air and catches it, which isn't part of any kata she can think of. Still showing off. "I might want it back one of these days."

"Over my dead body." Her voice catches again, _damn_ it, she's betraying herself all over the place today and that is just not going to fucking fly. _Get it together, for God's sake, Kate._

Clint just smiles a little and brings the sword up in a vague salute. "That's the spirit, Bishop. That's what I like to hear."  
**  
Billy closes the door and sighs, dropping the facade he'd kept in place for his parents and limping across the bedroom. Kate winces in sympathy and offers a hand, withdrawing it at his sharp glare.

"The prodigal Hawkeye returns." Billy carefully lowers himself to the floor and stretches out on his stomach, pillowing his chin on his arms and making a soft sound of relief. "Well, you sure know how to get back in the swing of things. Disappear on us for a week and come back with chaos and violence."

"What can I say? I like being busy." She leans back against Billy's bed and twists her hair into a rope, holding it of the back of her neck for a moment before she lets it go. "And I missed it."

"You mean you missed _us_, right?" Billy raises his eyebrows and makes a face that might be a smile. "I'm sure that's what you were going to say in the thirty seconds between when we all said hi and when that car exploded."

"Yes, I missed you, Captain Guilt Trip." She squints at the bulletin board on the opposite wall. "Are those runes? Are you trying to open a portal to another dimension?"

"Runes, yes; dimension, no." He turns over on his back and gestures vaguely at the board. "Just trying out some new things. Practicing, you know? It makes perfect."

"So I've heard." She studies the board again and then glances at him. "Has your practicing blown anything up yet?"

"No. But give me time." He smiles again and looks at her, eyes narrowing slightly. "So where have you been?"

"Busy."

"Strike one."

She shrugs. "Grounded."

"Plausible, but unlikely, because your dad _never_ punishes you. I call strike two."

She grabs a sock from the pile of clothes on the floor and throws it at him. "In California."

He winds the sock between his fingers and frowns a little. "No shit?"

"I was grounded _and_ in California. Mobile grounding. Grounding with bonus travel."

"Kind of defeats the point of being grounded."

"I pointed that out and earned myself another day and a forced trip to Disneyland."

"So what happened?"

She shrugs again, twisting her hair around her hand and tugging it tight. "You know."

"If I _knew_, I wouldn't _ask_, Kate." Billy's always cranky when he's sore. She should get him an ice pack and see if that distracted him from picking her apart. "Come on."

"I left school in the middle of the day, walked around the park for hours, broke up two fights and a mugging, then practiced with Clint instead of going to a Stanford recruitment meeting with my dad."

Billy blinked. "I'm guessing your dad knows about maybe half of that?"

"More or less."

"And so he took you to visit Stanford personally?"

"Yeah. I thought he would be mad, but instead he was just...practical." She shakes her head and pulls her hair back again, wishing she had a rubber band, or something else to keep it out of her face, or just the guts to chop it all off and start over. "And gave me a lecture about what I'd be throwing away if I cut more classes and don't do well in school."

"That's a fun one. I've heard that one." Billy goes quiet for a moment, just watching her. It starts to make her skin crawl, the scrutiny.

"Quit it."

"I'm not doing anything."

"Better not be trying to read my mind."

"Not my gig and you know it."

"Then what?"

He shifts onto his side, picking at the carpet. "Why'd you skip the meeting with your dad? I know you didn't just forget. You never forget anything, Kate."

She stands up, forcing herself to move slowly and feel every muscle unfold to extension. "I wanted to go shoot with Clint."

"But your dad was waiting."

"I don't want to go to Stanford."

Billy sits up, pushing his hair back off his forehead and looking at her sharply. "Did you hit your head?"

"Billy..."

"I mean, you're crazy not to go, since you _can_, so I assume we're looking at blunt-force trauma of some kind."

'You really don't get it?" The look on his face doesn't leave much room for doubt. "Forget it, then."

"Kate. Don't get pissed at me."

She takes a breath, struggling to push the frustration deeper in her chest, down below where it can choke her. "You would go to Stanford?"

"In a minute." He runs one hand through his hair again and gestures vaguely at the bookshelf across the room with the other. "I mean, there's no way, but I think I've got a good shot at this scholarship to Michigan, and then I just won't leave until they let me into the med school, and--"

"What about Teddy?"

Billy blinks again and rubs at his forehead. "He wants to go to NYU. Study pretty much anything that doesn't involve Skrulls. Or Kree. Or explosions. I think he said art history, last time we talked about it."

"But then what happens to the two of you?"

He frowns at her and shakes his head. "They have this crazy Internet thing now, Kate. And phones. And vacations."

"But what about us?" She can't seem to keep all the emotions down where they belong; they're breeding in there, or something, rising up as unidentifiable hybrids that catch in her throat and make her voice come out wrong.

"What are you talking about?"

"Us. The Young Avengers. What..." She sighs and looks away, putting her hands up in surrender. "Never mind."

"We knew it wasn't forever, Kate. I mean, nothing--"

"Forget it, okay?" Her voice is tight and scratchy and _wrong_, enough so that she takes a step toward the door. Billy's lips are pressed together in a tight line that she recognizes; she can just imagine what he's holding back, what variation on _please, tell me some more about your poor little rich girl problems_, and then she'll punch him, and it'll all be gone even sooner than it has to be.

"So are you gonna go?" he asks finally.

"Go where?"

"Kate."

"I mean, do you mean am I going home, right now? Or are we still talking about college?"

"I was talking about college, but now I think I mean are you going home, right now."

"No. But I am leaving." She grabs her backpack from the floor and studies the runes again as she puts it on. Better than looking at him. "Don't worry about calling me tomorrow morning."  
**  
Sometimes she wonders if Captain America didn't leave something behind, some kind of echo that makes people who loved him or looked up to him or...just people that he touched come looking for him like homing pigeons, even after he died. All those trips back to Avengers Mansion, picking through the dust and garbage and ghosts of a long time ago. All the people who tried to take up his name and his shield, and then threw them down again, up until this most recent one who seemed to be making a run at it. Kate can't quite manage to be outraged anymore. Either this guy's the real deal and carrying on the name with honor, or it'll eat him up from the inside out and Steve Rogers' ghost will sit on the end of his bed and be disappointed in him every night until he goes crazy in a hurry.

Kate's not enough of a narcissist to want to call herself Captain anything, and the thought of the mansion is too much for her to deal with tonight. When she left Billy's, she thought she was just going to walk for a while, get some air, stay out just past when she started to get scared just to prove to herself that she could. And yet here she is, on the steps of the courthouse where Cap fell. Called home like a good little girl, one of Cap's good little birds.

"If you were here, I would punch you," she mutters, staring at the little memorial at the side of the steps, still makeshift and clumsy, due to be replaced by something formal involving a sculpture and an eternal flame that hasn't quite made it through the red tape yet. Right now it's a laminated newspaper page, some rain-crumpled cards, a teddy bear, and a few candles that somebody keeps lighting every night.

She sits down next to the somber little shrine and picks up the bear, turning it over in her hands. The plush is bedraggled and clumped together with water and dirt. She thinks vaguely that Cap probably would have wanted this bear to be keeping a kid company somewhere, hearing whispered secrets and confessions, being hugged tight to guard against monsters in the dark, not left out here to mold and fall apart in his name. He never wanted to be a martyr. He never considered himself a saint.

At least, she doesn't think so. She touches her finger to the black-bead eyes one at a time and thinks that she needs to make sure a large check gets written to donate toys to shelters. "But what do I know? I didn't know him either."

"You knew enough."

She jumps, scrambling for weapons that aren't there, finding her defensive stance far too late and slipping a little on the steps on the way. Bucky's standing two steps down, his hands shoved in his pockets, an odd little smile on his face.

"Your reflexes are shot," he says, hunching his shoulders a little against the wind. "I could've been someone else."

"I'm kind of having a bad night." She sits down again, slowly, glancing up and down the street in a belated effort at caution. She tosses the bear back down beside the cards and the candles. "What are you doing here?"

"Out for a walk. You?"

"Same."

"Nice night for it." He sits down, turning his back to her and looking out at the street. "If you're here to talk to his ghost or something, I'd say you should save your breath."

"I don't believe in ghosts."

"I do. But I don't think he would consider it right to hang around and offer wisdom. He would expect us to figure it all out on our own." He glances back at her and smiles a little, a twist of his mouth that doesn't change his eyes. "He was a real jerk that way."

She smiles back, knowing it probably looks much the same. "I'm not here to talk to him. I don't know why I came here. I was just walking and this is where I ended up."

They sit in silence for a few moments, watching the street. Bucky stretches his legs out in front of him and leans back on his elbows, his metal arm clinking softly against the stone even through his jacket. "It's a nice night."

"You said that already."

"I was afraid that if I didn't say something, you'd start sharing what's on your mind."

"Can't have that." She reaches over and picks up one of the candles that's burned down to a sputtering wick in a pool of liquid wax. The cup is hot enough against her fingers to make her wince, blow it out quickly, and toss it away. "I don't really want to talk about it anyway."

"Good."

"How did you know you wanted to be a soldier?"

He sighs, a hint of laughter in the sound, and glances back at her again. "I didn't. It just kind of happened."

"But helping people. Protecting people. Serving people, the...the greater good. All of that. How did you know that was what you wanted to..."

"I _didn't_." He shakes his head and taps his knuckles against her knee. "That stuff was all Steve's gig. The ideals. The big things. I just wanted to kick the crap out of the bad guys."

She runs her fingers along the edge of the step, feeling the concrete bite against her skin. "I like that part."

"What's the problem, Hawkeye?"

Coming from him, the name is blunt and abrupt; there's no history there, no weight. The lack of expectations in the word hits her like a pulled punch, surprise more than pain. "This is what I want to do with my life."

"Sit on the steps of the courthouse?"

"Protect people. Kick the crap out of bad guys." She shakes her head, letting her hair fall forward over her face so she doesn't have to look at him. "Be a soldier."

"You don't want to be a soldier."

She slams her heels down against the steps in frustration. "Everybody keeps telling me that without knowing a damn thing about what I--"

"What you're describing," he says, his voice flat and even, not rising one iota to match her, "is not being a soldier."

She seriously considers kicking him in the head, if only it wouldn't earn her a broken leg. "What is it, then?"

"Closer to being a warrior, I guess. Or a vigilante. A general pain in the ass for all law-abiding citizens and the well-meaning control freaks who end up in charge." He shrugs and taps her knee again until she looks at him. "A soldier follows orders, Hawkeye. A soldier does what he's told and goes back to his bunk. A soldier goes home when somebody tells him he doesn't belong there, he's outgunned and should leave it to the specialists. People like you and me, we don't like to do what we're told. We don't make good soldiers."

She swallows, and it's easier, like that block of pushed-down anger in her chest has shifted a little. "Good at being annoying and kicking the crap out of people, though."

"Yes." He laughs and shakes his head, reaching over to right the teddy bear again. "Very good at that."

She stands up, wincing as stiff muscles complain. "This is what I want to do. For as long as I can. This is what I want to _do_."

"Then do it." He shrugs, like he doesn't see any kind of a problem with the idea. "You want to wake up sore every morning and spend every night of your life running towards trouble? Then do it." She nods slowly and he gives her a sharp look. "I hope you weren't waiting for my permission."

"No."

"Good. People like us, we don't do that, either."

She sketches a salute in his direction and starts down the steps. "Got it."

She glances back when she's halfway to the corner and he's still there, placing another candle on the step and setting it aglow.  
**  
Billy's voice is sleepy and muffled and not happy at all. "What the hell, Kate?"

"Good morning, Wiccan."

"You told me not to bother you this morning."

"I know. I'm bothering you instead."

She can hear him shuffling around, reluctantly moving out of bed and into the day. "You're awfully happy for this hour of the morning."

"Something new I'm trying out."

"Also awfully happy compared to the mood you were in yesterday."

She winces and pulls the phone away from her ear to check the time on the call. Forty-five seconds. She'd thought it would take him at least a minute and a half to bring that up. "I'm sorry about that."

"Forget it. It's fine."

She knows that tone; she could leave it there and he would let it go, but she owes him better. Teammates deserve better. "I overreacted. I mean, I bet they have trouble in California, right?"

"Um, yes," he says, and she can tell he's rolling his eyes even over the phone. "Have you ever watched the news?"

"In Michigan, too. Or...well, wherever. Everywhere."

"Is this a new, improved, Zen Kate Bishop? Because I don't know how to deal with that."

"How about you let me buy you coffee after school?"

"Assuming nothing blows up, you're on."

"Great." She looks over at the corner of her room, where her bow is waiting. "Let's do some training today. I feel like kicking ass."

"I'll warn Eli."

"It's more fun if I surprise him."

"I think he would disagree."

She smiles and runs her fingers through her hair. "I'll see you later. Hawkeye out."


End file.
